Psychiatric-Mental Health Clinical Practice Across the Lifespan
The goal of this two-term practicum is to provide the student with an opportunity to develop clinical skills with individuals and family across the lifespan. While in psychiatric clinical settings, students apply skills including holistic physical and mental health assessment, formulate differential diagnosis, plan and implement developmentally appropriate psychiatric nursing interventions, and evaluate interventions and outcomes with children, adolescents, adults, older adults, and their families. Emphasis is placed on application of a variety of population-specific assessment skills and use of differential diagnosis, and a beginning utilization of pharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatment methods with individuals, groups, and families.
Applied Psychopharmacology Across the Lifespan
This elective course builds on Clinical Psychopharmacology Across the Lifespan and is designed to facilitate student expertise and confidence in prescribing the major categories of psychiatric medications to patients across the lifespan. The course is divided into eight major topic areas: antipsychotic, antidepressant, anti-anxiety, mood-stabilizing, hypnotic, stimulant, cognitive enhancement, and substance use treatment medications used in the treatment of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan. The concepts of sleep disruption, personality function, and pain management are integrated into each topic area.
Clinical Outcome Management in Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing
The provision of mental health services is determined by many factors including policy, public demand, research evidence, ideas among general practitioners and mental health professionals, and the financial pressures under which purchasers and providers of services work. These groups often have widely disparate views about the nature of mental disorders and their most appropriate interventions. In providing services to individuals, families, groups, systems, and organizations, the advanced practice psychiatric nurse functions as clinician, consultant, leader, educator, and researcher in the analysis of critical issues important to decision-making and intervention. The assumption underlying the course is that all advanced practice mental health services should be fundamentally theoretical and evidence-based. In this course students define clinical problems and system implications, use technology to identify clinical and research evidence, and critically analyze the evidence. Based on this analysis they devise and present realistic plans for intervention in the clinical setting and write an evidence-based review paper summarizing the results.